Yorkshire Sculpture Park are presenting a major solo exhibition by pioneering Chilean artist, Alfredo Jaar. Widely regarded as one of the world's most politically engaging yet poetic artists, Jaar addresses humanitarian trauma and the politics of image-making, creating visually and emotionally stunning works that have an exceptional aesthetic. Trained as a magician and subsequently as an architect, Jaar often uses constructed spaces and light to navigate what is seen and what is not. At YSP seminal installations transform the Underground Gallery and open air.

The exhibition includes a major new commission, The Garden of Good and Evil (2017), presented in the open air and visible through the glass façade of the gallery. On entering what appears to be a beautiful grove of trees, visitors experience elegantly fabricated steel cells, which reference 'black sites', the secret detention facilities operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) around the world. A work that Jaar has wanted to realise for some years and that YSP is uniquely placed to create, The Garden of Good and Evil is a significant commission for YSP and for the UK. Thanks to a donation by the artist it will have a home in YSP's permanent collection after the exhibition closes.

Canvas is an Arts Council-funded initiative bringing together arts organisations across England with a series of wide-ranging objectives - making arts content more discoverable and engaging; increasing the number of people engaging with the arts; increasing the volume and quality of creative media; and supporting the skills and digital capacity of the arts sector.

It consists of two interrelated projects; the Canvas channel and the Canvas network. The Canvas channel publishes, curates and promotes video across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with the aim of inspiring 18-35 year olds to explore the world of art. The Canvas network helps arts organisations develop their online video strategy and output through advice, support, training and collaborative projects.

News

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Culture Matters are pleased to announce a new Songwriting and Spoken Word Award. The Award is now open for submissions. The purpose of the new Award is to encourage songwriters and spoken word performers to write material meaningful to working class people and communities, and to encourage those communities to engage more with songwriting and spoken word. There is a £100 cash prize for each of the top five entries, and the winners will be asked to perform at the CWU annual conference in 2018. For full details see the article in the Music section.

Arts hub

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx this year, John Green gives a brief outline of some of the influences of Marxist thought on moviemakers. What influence has Marx had on film and the cinema? A rather odd if not idiotic question the reader might think. After…

Jenny Farrell marks Tomás Mac Síomóin's birthday on 19 February with an essay on this subversive, internationalist writer, who translated the Communist Manifesto into Irish, satirises contemporary neoliberal Ireland in poetry and prose, and is ignored and unofficially censored by the Irish literary-political establishment. One of the tragedies that befell Ireland…

The outstanding German communist playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht was born on 10 February 1898, 120 years ago. To celebrate the anniversary, Jenny Farrell has sent us one of his poems, which was translated by her father, Jack Mitchell. The image is by Mark Titchner, an artist who lives and works…

Scott McLemee reviews The Young Karl Marx, which, on the eve of 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, contains themes of economic crises and inequalities that remain relevant today. Released last year but receiving as yet very little English-language press coverage, Der Junge Karl Marx is a nuanced and surprisingly accurate…

Mike Quille reviews an involving, stimulating exhibition which encourages the growing appetite for cultural democracy. The recent appointment of Elisabeth Murdoch to Arts Council England was yet more evidence of the increasing domination of public funding for the arts by corporate and right-wing interests. There is growing resistance, however, among…

On the 170th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto, Jenny Farrell introduces Brecht’s poetic re-writing of the Communist Manifesto, with its ‘spectre of communism, which continues to be a threat to the rulers and a friend to the damned of the earth.’ In February 1848, Marx and Engels…

To mark the anniversary of the birthday of Rosa Parks, Phil Brett examines the impact of Civil Rights militancy on the sleeves of soul and funk albums. In Wearing Their Politics on Their Sleeves we looked at how the growing Civil Rights Movement in the USA had influenced the design…

The Communist Hypothesis: ten lessons from Alain Badiou by Chris Norris We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy – the form of state suited to capitalism – and to the inevitable and 'natural'…

Culture hub

Stephen Pritchard outlines a brief history of art, property and artwashing, and calls on us to take art back from the capitalists – in all their guises. Art has always been a form of property. During the Renaissance, art was the property of Royalty, the nobility and the church. It was…

Graham Stevenson reports on the recent Real Jessie Eden event in Birmingham, including Dave Puller's new poem on Jessie. Over 60 people crowded into the upstairs room at Cherry Reds café and bar in central Birmingham throughout the course of the Real Jessie Eden event, jointly organised by Culture Matters…

Keith Flett calls for a 'cultural campaign' to defend good beer against Big Beer. In the introduction to the 2018 Good Beer Guide, veteran editor Roger Protz sent out an important message about the threat of Big Beer (aka monopoly capitalism) to cask and craft beer alike. Protz’s concern was…

Andy Croft introduces the biennial T-junction International Poetry Festival in Middlesbrough, 25-29 April Two hundred and fifty years ago Middlesbrough-born James Cook sailed around the world on HMS Endeavour. It was an extraordinary voyage of scientific discovery, opening up the European imagination to undreamed of places and peoples under different stars.…

Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt offers a critique of the section in the 2017 Labour Manifesto on Culture for All, and some suggestions for promoting creativity for everyone, to benefit our health, well-being, and our capacity for political thinking and collective working. The current Labour leadership is characterised by its openness to ideas relevant…

Mike Quille finds more evidence of the corporate takeover of the arts. What is art for? Is it just another form of social control? A crucial part of the ability of a class to politically dominate society, and to justify its economic exploitation of the labour of working people, is…

‘With all your body, all your heart and all your mind, listen to the Revolution.’ said the poet Alexander Blok in 1918. As the centenary year of the Russian Revolution ends and we move into 2018, we have published Listen to the Revolution - The Impact of the Russian Revolution on…

Picture: Calum Colvin, Portrait after Archibald Skirving. Burns Unbroke opens on 25 January 2018 at Summerhall in Edinburgh. This new, contemporary, multi-arts festival will celebrate the variety of artistic and performing practices currently on offer in Scotland, and beyond, through the prism offered by new interpretations of the life and…

The arts are just a part of the weapons of life. Art can make us see and feel reality and help change that reality. Art is revelation. Art is hard work. Art is part of protest.

Jayne Cortez

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

The most precious thing in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth.

Rosa Luxemburg
Letters from Prison

The individual will reach full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken. This will be translated concretely into the reconquering of one's true nature through liberated labor, and the expression of one's own human condition through culture and art,